In a drive to make spring a turnaround season for their troubled railroad, Metro-North senior managers are stepping up the pace of safety improvements and conducting a "listening tour" to hear complaints firsthand from commuters.

Staffers have spent weeks analyzing — train by train, trip by trip — exactly why service has been so abysmally unreliable since last summer, and President Joseph Giulietti promises that the new timetable coming out in a few weeks will give schedules that commuters can rely on.

Since he took over in February, Giulietti has promised Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and state lawmakers that the busiest commuter railroad in the country is going to straighten up after a two-year stretch of accidents, severe service disruptions and operational blunders.

Executives are scrambling to rebuild the railroad's damaged reputation, and since mid-March have announced a series of safety improvements.

The highest-visibility initiative has been the two-hour-long informal talks with commuters, which began in March at Grand Central Terminal. Riders who had been accustomed to Metro-North's reliable schedules grew infuriated during the fall and winter by widespread delays.

Giulietti has pledged the railroad will do a better job of listening to customers' complaints and remedying problems — or at least explaining why they're happening. For instance, trains began running slower last year because of track repairs initiated after a devastating derailment in Bridgeport. But the railroad didn't announce the change to customers; instead, riders learned about it from James Cameron, who was then chairman of a railroad watchdog council.

Giulietti has given assurances that from now on, passengers will be told up front when operations encounter trouble.

The remaining schedule of talks with commuters is May 1 from 7 to 9 a.m. at Grand Central; May 6 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Croton-Harmon station and May 14 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Harrison station.

In March, Metro-North Railroad announced several safety upgrades:

• It has finished installing automatic speed restrictions for trains entering five critical curves and five moveable bridges in Connecticut and New York. After a deadly high-speed wreck last December in the Bronx, the Federal Railroad Administration ordered the work be completed by Sept. 1.

Sensors and wiring along the tracks will notify engineers when they must reduce speed approaching those 10 spots; if they don't the train will automatically stop, Metro-North said.

"I'm pleased that this critical safety measure — a modest milestone — has been achieved. It is long overdue. Had these signal upgrades been implemented before December 1, 2013, four people might well be alive today, and the horrific crash at Spuyton Duyvil been averted," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs a Senate subcommittee on rail safety.

The National Transportation Safety Board has reported that engineer William Rockefeller was suffering from sleep apnea when his train hurtled off the tracks at 82 mph on Dec. 1. New York prosecutors haven't filed charges, but injured survivors have begun suing the railroad.

So far, neither the FRA nor Metro-North have explained why – based on a crash apparently related chiefly to Rockefeller's control of the train — they're ordering permanent, lower speed restrictions on tracks that have been in place for many decades. Those restrictions will guarantee trains running slower, meaning longer trips for commuters who are trying to reduce their time in transit;

Metro-North and its sister operation, the Long Island Rail Road, announced they'll seek bids to install outward- and inward-facing cameras in engineers' cabs.

The work would cover all diesel locomotives as well as 843 cabs of Metro-North's M-8s and 926 of the LIRR's M-7s.

"The primary purpose of the cameras is to aid in post-accident/incident investigations. Another function is to deter behaviors that could affect safe train operations," the railroad said.

Both railroads also said they'll install monitoring equipment on rails to warn of defective wheels on freight trains that use their tracks.

On the New Haven line, the equipment will be installed in Fairfield. Sensors on the tracks will alert a Metro-North operations center if they recognize flat spots on wheels or overheated wheels.

"This specialized equipment will improve safety and reduce wear and tear on our tracks," said Thomas F. Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, parent agency of the two railroads. "They are intended to identify faults before they cause problems."

So far, however, neither Metro-North nor the MTA have indicated they'll be talking more openly about sensitive topics of concern to taxpayers and riders. An inspector general's report last year documented widespread fraud by work crews assigned to the track maintenance division, but the railroad executives won't discuss specifics and speak only in generalities about discouraging workers from filing phony overtime invoices and taking hours-long personal trips while on the clock.

And the railroad won't address why management oversight deteriorated so badly under former President Howard Permut, nor which of his subordinates were part of that failure.

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